(Disclaimer: I played this game on an emulator as I'd probably cramp my hands playing it on an actual Game Boy. This ties in with one of my points later on)

X1
X2
X3
X4
X5
X6
X7
X8
Xtreme 2

Mega Man Xtreme is a pretty neat little game for what it is, being the first in a duology of portable Mega Man X games which is an absolutely killer idea (I literally just beat this game like 30 minutes ago and I haven't even touched Xtreme 2 yet).

All the levels are taken right out of X1 and X2 with a few tweaks here and there, some perfectly understandable such as the removal of the polygon sword midboss in Magna Centipedes level while others are pretty strange such as how the Heart Tank and the Sub-tank in Storm Eagles stage are swapped around. Dr Light Capsules are still very much around here, this time giving X his first armor from X1 again except because X has the dash from the get-go, the leg upgrade now gives him the ability to wall dash (this replaces his default wall jump once you acquire the upgrade, so you'll have to get used to the extra mobility when you try and wall jump). There's also a 2nd set of Light Capsules this time around, but rather than giving you armor they give you various ways of summoning Zero for help, in the only instance where the capsules give you something other than armor for X. The degraded remixes are admittedly pretty charming to hear as well.

The way progression is handled is pretty odd as well. You do the intro stage, fight 4 bosses and then you unlock the Sigma levels. And then once you beat those you find out that was only half of the game as then you unlock a "Hard Mode" where you fight another 4 bosses while maintaining the items and special weapons you acquired previously and then you gotta do those same Sigma levels again which aren't changed at all apart from Sigma gaining a few new attacks. AND THEN after that you unlock the "Extreme Mode" where it's all 8 stage bosses rather than 4 at a time and you lose all the items and special weapons from before so you gotta get all those again. All that to say it's the same as any other Mega Man X game: fight 8 stage bosses then go kick Sigmas ass but they did try to make it kinda unique compared to the other X games, probably to pad the game out but that's up to you to guess.

Staying on the Sigma levels, as I mentioned earlier, all the stages in this game are recreations of stages seen in X1 and X2, and it's no different in the case of the Sigma levels. The first stage is a recreation of Sigma Fortress 1 from X1, the second stage is a recreation of X-Hunter Stage 3 from X2 and then the 3rd is the boss rush and the Sigma battle. Now this brings about a few implications. In the original Sigma Fortress 1 you fought Vile partway through the stage and it's somewhat different here, this time pitting you up against either a new bad guy called Zain on Normal Mode who uses a big sword or another new bad guy called Geemal on Hard Mode who likes to teleport around to catch you off guard (you can fight both of these guys earlier in the game by going to where the X-Hunter rooms would be in the X2 stages). It's a unique way to twist up the stage as if you didn't know any better you'd think you'd just run into Vile again, but it's cool they spiced it up as Vile doesn't really have a presence in Xtreme, you beat him in the intro stage then he fucks off and never shows up again for the rest of the game, as it turns out he was revived by the hacker of the Mother Computer that this games plot revolves around. Anyway in regards to X-Hunter Stage 3, I bring that up in regards to implications as it still has the secret Light Capsule, this time giving you BOTH the Hadoken AND the Shoryuken! Unfortunately they no longer OHKO bosses, but they still do the most amount of damage out of all of Xs attacks (4-5 units of damage across all bosses aside from Wolf Sigma), therefore they're not quite as fun to use in X1/X2, but they're still nice to have regardless.

Now the big major criticism I have with Xtreme is the controls. Now the overall movement does feel SLIGHTLY more janky than the SNES games, but it's still pretty smooth despite that, although I hope to God this was just an issue with the emulator I used (mGBA) but there were instances where I just wouldn't use my special weapons despite the fact I was pressing the key to shoot. This was only a problem for bosses where I felt more comfortable blasting them with their weaknesses, as I was able to use my X-Buster just fine on all but a few bosses which doesn't have that issue. And this next criticism isn't as important but GOD Wheel Gator is much more obnoxious here than he was in X2. It feels like he has i-frames after more of his attacks and he has the tremor effect that some X3 bosses have that fucks with your ability to wall jump. This one is all on me but some of the bosses, most notably Chill Penguin have significantly different patterns than they used to, which took a while to get used to. Chill Penguin for example seems to use the "Jump into X" attack more often in Xtreme than in X1 which caught me off guard initially.

In conclusion, a good enough portable Mega Man X experience that's at least fun to go through once, albeit tainted by a few instances of awful controls which I'm unsure are a game problem or an emulator problem. Progression may look different, but at its core it's the same as any other Mega Man X game. I'd recommend at least playing it once just to experience it and then save Extreme Mode for a replay later down the line.